


Good Enough

by AsexualNewt (LovesLoki)



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Animals as a substitute for human affection, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Blood and Gore, Child Abandonment, Geralt of Rivia needs a hug, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:54:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovesLoki/pseuds/AsexualNewt
Summary: Geralt just wanted to be good enough for someone. Just once in his life.An uneducated (ie, I’ve only seen the Netflix show) look at how Geralt ended up the way he is. Sweet, helpful, dangerous and just completely accepting of the shitty treatment he gets.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter 1

Geralt just wanted to be good enough for someone. Just once in his life.

-

One

-

Animals broke Geralt’s heart too, but in different ways than humans did. They loved him back, as fiercely as he could ask, but their lives were short compared to the ordinary man. And the white haired witcher was no ordinary man.

-

Geralt’s memory began shortly before his mother had abandoned him. At that time, like most five year olds, he had been playful, rambunctious and imaginative, but also sweet and helpful and kind. He had been a fairly well behaved child; in so far as his knowledge of regular children went. He did not interact with children as an adult, beyond them running screaming at the sight of him. He pretended this did not affect him. He spent a great deal of time pretending things did not affect him. 

Always large and strong for his age; Visenna, Geralt’s mother, had always emphasized the necessity of being kind to those less powerful or able than him. She extended this to animals as well as other children. While they were often food and sometimes dangerous, creatures of all shapes and sizes were not good or evil. Animals did not make moral decisions. They were not cruel. They did not discriminate based upon blood or profession as humans and other sentients were wont to do. 

His mother had shaken her head at his constant play fighting against dragons and wolves and the slaying of many monsters. She held that as long as a creature, man or beast, was doing no harm to others out of the natural order of things, then they should be left alone. Despite this she had always praised his kindness and goodhearted helpful nature. 

As an adult witcher, Geralt supposed that even if someone were to take the time to get to know him, they might be surprised to learn of his love of animals. After all, he hunted and killed herbivores as often as he foraged for edible vegetation while on the road; and he professionally killed predators for coin. He had long lived with the contradiction of who people thought him to be, and who he knew himself to be. He was a man of many contradictions in fact. He was an unfeeling witcher; and one who cared too deeply and too often to be healthy for any being so long lived. He was a hunter and a killer who carefully considered the necessity of ending each life before he took it.

If anyone took the time to get to know him even marginally, they would soon notice the deep affection the stoic warrior had toward his horse. While certainly not the first animal of Geralt’s long life, Roach was a very good mare. She was even tempered and quite intelligent for a horse. Not easily spooked by the monsters the pair encountered near daily, but willing and able to defend herself with a well placed kick or bite. 

Eternally patient with Geralt’s need for physical contact that was not painful, she returned Geralt’s hugs and pats with affectionate headbutts and by using him as a scratching post when her eyes itched. In Roach, as with other beasts of burden or dogs before her, the witcher had a source of companionship that did not wish his money, his sword or his life. She had never cursed at him, spat at him, been afraid of him or hated him for the changes forced upon him as a child. Though she had covered him in snot on occasion when he was unfortunate enough to be before her when she sneezed. Roach had never cared what color his eyes or hair were, she merely wanted to know if he had anything tasty in his pockets. 

Yet for all the love and affection between them, and for all that Geralt was firmly attached to the chestnut mare, he knew that sooner or later she too would leave him. Be it some monster who slipped past Geralt, a vengeful human, a simple case of colic or merely old age, Roach would not be with him forever. This knowledge had not stopped the witcher from falling in love with the horse about two seconds after he had acquired her as a spirited filly not yet willing to carry a rider. He spent a great deal of time pretending things did not affect him.

Every time such thoughts occurred to him; often while listening to accusations or whispers of witchers being heartless and unfeeling, he smiled a small, sad smile to himself.

“Heartless, heh. If only.”


	2. Chapter 2

Two

-

Amid the myriad lessons of Kaer Morhen, the one thing young Geralt yet wished to learn was how to make people stop leaving him. 

-

The fateful day his mother had disappeared, he had been stunned. When he reemerged onto the path to discover the horse, the cart and his mother gone, he had dropped the fetched water and bolted off down the trail in search of her. He had walked until his feet ached, called out until his voice was hoarse and raw. Even when the strange man he later learned was called Vesemir found him and took him in, still he searched when he could. 

In fact, the first notice the adults at Kaer Morhen paid him was because the boy slipped managed to slip out unnoticed one night, to roam the mountain paths in search of the woman who abandoned him. Overtime, in the way that children do, the now subdued young man decided that it was his fault she had left him. Obviously he had committed some terrible wrong against her or another. Something so unforgivable that his own flesh and blood deemed him unworthy company, and that this was the reason behind his mother’s disappearance. 

In the privacy of cold nights in echoing chambers, the nights he did not immediately slip into exhausted slumber Geralt wondered if he might remedy the situation. That perhaps, if he was good enough, if he did everything perfectly, if he was all that Vesemir expected him to be and more, his mother would return and would love him as a mother should. 

Now looking back as an adult, Geralt remembered well the difficulty this left him with. Wanting to please the ghost of his mother and honor everything she had taught him in the waning hope that she would come back for him. At the same time, he was training to kill monsters; losing his own humanity, becoming something less, something inhuman himself so that ordinary people could live out their existence in peace. The older he got the more he realized that in the course of this mission to bring peace and normalcy to others, witchers were denied these very things for themselves. 

Young Geralt pushed himself hard. Harder than any of his brethren, pushing himself farther than his master demanded, trying to live up to the ghost of the woman who had abandoned him. His efforts met with such great success that his trials, mutations and tests were dragged out far longer than for most of the boys. The survival rate at Kaer Morhen was dismal to begin with, but the extent to which Visenna’s son pushed himself, and was encouraged to by his masters, left some surprised when he beat the odds and survived to manhood. 

Some time after a final round of mutations had stressed the young witcher’s body so greatly that all pigment fled his hair and his skin lightened noticeably, Geralt suffered another abandonment. This granted, was a loss which he was more prepared for than his mother’s abandonment more than a decade prior. The young witcher was told his molding by the school was complete and any further learning he required would take place out in the world, at the hands of demons and beasts. 

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have more chapters written and planned. Just moved and had to get the weefees hooked up before I could do much work on this.   
> Also, this is the first day off I've had since before the move. So, next chapter will be longer for sure!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got ambitious, and I have wifi now, so here's another chapter. Enjoy!

Three

-

A witcher was supposed to kill monsters and earn coin... and also endure the loathing of those whose lives he saved.

-

His first monster, unexpectedly, was of the human variety. Geralt was fresh from Kaer Morhen, feeling the sting of his latest abandonment, though his older and more mature self had not broken down and cried as his younger self had done, before the emotionless mask of the witchers was beaten into him. He was determined to prove to his masters, and the shadow of his mother, who still haunted his thoughts and feels when he let his mind drift, that he was more than capable of the task set before him. And, in a private corner of his mind, unacknowledged even to himself, he desperately wanted to prove that he was worthy of being cared for, of not being abandoned, of not being alone. In his heart of hearts, Geralt just wanted to be loved, though he did not truly know the meaning of the word.

With all this heavy on his spirit, Geralt happened upon a tinker and his daughter on their way to market. The pair had been apprehended by a particularly brutal band of thugs who had been terrorizing these parts since the winter snows began to melt. His enhanced senses meant that Geralt smelled and heard the situation before he was within sight or actionable distance. From around the wooded bend in the path he could hear the father’s pleas and smell the sharp tang of fear in the area, mixed with other aromas; anger, panic, arousal, a light tang of blood.

“It’s time you met a real man.” coupled with the sound of ripping fabric, met his ears as he rounded a bend in the road to avoid a thick patch of aspen trees. Geralt’s already quickened pace became a sprint even as he reached over his shoulder to loosen his blade from its sheath.

The woman, girl really, stank of panic and despair where she lay on the ground. Her brown dress, too light for this early in the year was ripped down a seam from bodice to mid-thigh and she had tears on her face, one hand raised protectively before her. The obvious ring-leader (huge, bald head, rotting teeth, stinking) stood a few inches above any of his followers, filthy and leering. He was clearly enjoying the fear as much as any other aspect of the spectacle. 

Geralt took all of this in as he bolted towards the gathering, sword glinting in the sunlight. Attention riveted to the girl on the ground, the closest ruffian never saw the sword that ended him. Wrenching the sword out of the man’s flesh, Geralt snarled his own words back at the ringleader,

“Time you met one.” 

and swung at his neck. 

The move did not work out as planned. Rather than cleanly separating the would-be rapist’s head from his shoulders, the blade sliced cleanly through veins, arteries and tendons and lodged in the vertebrae. The perfect, if unfortunate, angle to the strike caused the arterial spray to cover both himself and the now stunned woman on the ground in warm red. Geralt grimaced and with a few tugs freed the blade and quickly struck again, this time severing the head from the torso. It was not a clean break however, as a decently thick strip of flesh escaped his blade to still connect the head to the torso, causing it to dangle and swing for a few moments before a tearing sound was heard and the head hit the ground at the same time as the body, though finally separate.

Geralt grunted, glancing over his shoulder at the last two thugs holding the aged tinker. 

“Run.”

The bandits fled in an almost comedic rush.

Turning to the intended victim, the silver haired young witcher opened his mouth to… say something impressive he was sure, when the young woman looked up at him. Her eyes widening, she opened her mouth and screamed. Shrill and high and horrified in ways it had not been before. Geralt blinked his yellow eyes in confusion, unsure of what to do, of how to react. 

He took a half step back, but that did little good. The blood covered female took a breath, presumably to continue screaming but instead something caught in her throat, her eyes widened further and she half turned over to spew the contents of her stomach onto the dirt and rock surface of the road. With what looked to have been a hearty breakfast now splattered across the road, the girl gave in to the overwhelming emotions of the moment and passed out. Directly into a puddle of her own vomit. 

Geralt winced, stepping forward again, and bending to lift her head from out of her own stomach contents but was stopped by the father rushing forward and putting himself between his daughter and the young man. The aged tinker deliberately avoided eye contact with the witcher as he lifted his daughter up and laid her on the seat of his cart, making himself busy with tucking the remains of her dress modestly about her and wiping the vomit off her face with a handkerchief. 

After awkwardly standing by for a moment, Geralt made a ‘hmm’ sound in his throat, turned and walked away without another sound. 

‘Is this what it is like to be a hero?’ he thought to himself. ‘Or is it simply because I am a monster?’

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize I had forgotten to mentioned this. But this is the first story I've ever published. I used to write a lot, but never share, and now that I've gotten back into writing I decided to share. Mostly because there is always more room for some more good angst.   
> I hope you are all enjoying this as much as I am!

**Author's Note:**

> So, upon watching (read 'binging') the Netflix series on Christmas night I am in love. I am also firmly convinced that Geralt needs a fucking hug! Somebody(ies) really did him wrong a lot in life, this is my take on why. I’ve only ever seen the Netflix series, I’ve not (yet! I’m waiting for the delivery) read the books or played the games.  
> I’ve taken creative liberties with both Geralt’s mother, Visenna, and his mentor, Vesemir. I’m trying to keep Geralt in character, as I understood his character from the Netflix show.  
> I think I'll try to finish this story before I start in on the books though. I want to finish the story with the same head cannon I started it with!


End file.
